to volunteer to help those in need. when a twinge of back pain surprises him. morning starts in high spirits, but there's a growing pain in his lower back. as lines grow longer, his pain continues to linger. but after a long day of helping others, he gets some helpful advice. just two aleve have the strength to keep back pain away all day. today, jason chose aleve. just two pills for all day pain relief. try aleve d for strong, all day long sinus and headache relief. the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews at dem ni

plaza in new york. let me start tonight with this. here is my deal tonight. i want you watching us here all through the night but before you get settled, settle something really important. vote. get out there, get to the polls, and cast your ballot. then come back here, get some pizza or whatever you like for happy food and stick with us all night. i love election night. it's crisp, it's true, it separates the talk from the reality, it's compelling, it's dramatic, and nothing is better than a good concession speech. nothing is more exciting than getting that big checkmark next to the face that tells you the deed is done. tonight i urge my fellow voters to get ready, fasten your seat belts, say a prayer for our country and let's see who's got it and who doesn't. who is going to lead us deeper into the 21st century and who is heading for the sidelines. we've got a great lineup of our top people tonight. the first of our "hardball" all-stars nbc political director chuck todd and "the huffington post's" howard fineman. of course, what am i going to say? here we are. this is one of those nights you

don't need a script, you don't need the questions. the question looms. >> and we don't even have the exit polls and pretending we know something. we don't -- >> i'm definitely going to pretend i know something. >> we honestly stand before you equally in question of the truth. here we are tonight, let's watch some of the action from late today. the president stopped by his campaign office in chicago today and spoke to supporters. let's take a listen. >> i also want to say to governor romney, congratulations on a spirited campaign. i know that his supporters are just as engaged and just as enthusiastic and working just as hard. we feel confident we've got the votes to win but it's going to depend ultimately on whether those votes turn out and so i would encourage everybody on all sides just to make sure that you exercise this precious right that we have that people fought so hard for us to have. >> let's dispense with it, but not right away because i'm

feeling a little fidgety. this feels-y thing. how do you feel? i feel good about tonight. the candidates say -- what is this? what does the feeling thing tell you tonight? >> it tells you nothing, but i can tell you both genuinely somebody is either lying through their teeth to us but genuinely both sides feel pretty good about their turnouts. i would say republicans are acting more enthusiastic than some of the democratic operatives i have talked to. been more matter of fact and businesslike, particularly virginia, florida, and ohio. you hear some enthusiastic happy talk from operatives. >> where does that come from on the republican side? what is it based upon? >> they're monitoring precincts. everybody is monitoring their own turnout. >> isn't the republican turnout always great? >> there's always a possibility it was going to be higher on election day because of the emphasis on early voting for the obama campaign, but one of my

theories on this has always been both sides could be right about their own turnout. they just have been i think incorrect assumption because they're right on their turnout model that the other guy is wrong. >> this is a time before the exit polls really start coming in when you have to call what i think of as my golden sources. these are people state by state -- >> and they're state guys. >> state guys and gals that i have dealt with for a long time and that i trust. i talked to the guy i trust the most in pennsylvania, our home state. he's a republican. he said that on his side, he said turnout in republican areas in pennsylvania is very high. and that's good for him. but he also told me that from what -- >> is this bob asher? >> i'm not telling you who it is. but on the democratic side, he said that the turnout in democratic areas, including philadelphia, including an african-american precinct and wards and so forth is also very high. predicting a big turnout in pennsylvania. so in a way both sides -- it

sounds to me like both sides could be right. both sides have put a tremendous amount of organizal efforts. the obama campaign is obama organizing 2.0. the neighborhood campaigning. but the republicans have caught up in certain respects. they're taking it much more seriously on the ground than they did four years ago. big turnout in northern virginia -- >> i'm here in virginia all over the place, not just northern virginia. >> big turnout in virginia. >> let's talk -- that's what i want to talk about tonight. i have been telling people, i signed some books today, i have been talking to people in line saying watch virginia tonight. if obama wins virginia, check me on this, guys, that's a good night for obama if he wins virginia. >> possibly. but there are pathways -- here is the thing i keep telling people, don't assume it's all done. >> if he does that well that far south, doesn't that tell you -- >> well, but i would argue that what virginia -- what it could tell us is that the demographic strength of obama came through in virginia. but there -- he doesn't have the same demographics on his side in

ohio, wisconsin, and iowa. >> all the -- are you talking about the demographics meaning african-americans and single women or what? >> yes. i think the whole thing. >> chris, northern virginia is fascinating. for example, in the urban counties around d.c., heavy hispanic, heavy asian-american. >> a lot of vietnamese. >> they all them aap. >> asian american, pacific islanders. if the president carries virginia, if he holds virginia again, i think that's a very strong indicator of a good night. >> i don't disagree but i'm sayi saying. >> if he loses by a couple points, is it he still in it. >> it's really hard for romney to get to 270 if he loses virginia. it's not impossible because wisconsin i think is a sleeper state here. >> christmas morning is only a couple hours away, after 7:00, that christmas morning.

7:30, ohio. will we get a result by then? >> i'll be shocked if we get a result in ohio before midnight. and a result in north carolina. that's the other thing, i think north carolina will take us a long time to call because it's going to be tight. >> that's good news for obama. >> that's good news for obama. >> sure. >> the chris, the other thing in ohio i would look for, we have people everywhere, you have a million of them out there for nbc, ohio could be very contentious. there are hundreds of lawyers on the ground there. we're getting all kind of anecdotal evidence about questions about voter i.d., about laws, about opening of polls. same in pennsylvania. both pennsylvania and ohio, leaving florida out of the mix for now, have potentially difficult knotty problems about who voted, whose votes are counted, the early absentees -- >> what's the complication in pennsylvania? i thought there's no photo voter i.d. rule -- >> the complication in pennsylvania is at first the state legislature passed a law saying you have to have some form of voter i.d.

the courts threw it out provisionally. they said for this election for sure you do not have to have voter i.d., but we have heard about places in pennsylvania where people outside the polls are saying in various locations, no, no, you need -- >> who is doing this? who is doing it? >> that's a very good question, and at least -- >> that's -- isn't that illegal? >> the reports we're getting it's people who are telling voters in democratic areas they shouldn't be doing it. what the details are specifically i don't know. but if it's close, if it's within a half a point -- >> nothing drives me crazier than corruption like this. >> i think the real -- look, i don't buy pennsylvania. i think pennsylvania is going to be a three or four point. i will be shocked if it's anything less than three or four points for the president. the republicans didn't put the effort in there that they could have that might have made it better for them. ohio, if it is less that be 20,000 votes, less than 50,000 votes, we're not going to know the results of ohio for two weeks. >> with john kerry in '04 it was -- >> with 60,000 of flip.

if anything, if less than 30, somewhere between 25 and 30 could flip the state, particularly if the president is on the short end of that -- >> don't forget -- what's 4%? >> most of the provisionals -- >> if obama wins by the poll 3 or 4? >> 3 or 4 points? somewhere around 150 to 200,000 votes. >> that will be clear enough. you have left me very disturbed. howard and chuck. two-week thing drys me -- >> congratulations. >> we'll talk more about it later in the program. >> paperbook. >> the kennedy book is out in paperbook. they put the pub date on the john kennedy book. last night the president got emotional talking to a crowd in des moines, iowa, at his last rally of the campaign. probably his last campaign event of his life. let's take a look. >> i want to take this opportunity to say one thing to all the young people and not so young people who have given so much to this campaign over the years, those of you who haven't done this just for me but for

each other, for a laid off family member, for a sick child, for a fallen friend, to all of you who have lived and breathed the hard work of change, i want to thank you. you took this campaign and you made it your own and you organized yourselves block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, county by county starting a movement that spread across the country, a movement made up of young and old and rich and poor and black and white, latino, asian, native american. [ cheers and applause ] >> robert gibbs is former press secretary for president obama and senior adviser to the campaign. robert gibbs, thank you for joining us. i got up this morning and looked at all the numbers in all the papers and i thought looks good for obama. then tonight during the afternoon i started having -- people were dragging in big giant trunks that say romney on them. they're filled with that aroma. i said where are you getting this stuff from?

i don't know, i just hear it. who is pumping out the word romney is doing well better than the numbers? are they pumping it out systematically, professionally? >> my guess is somebody in boston is trying to do this, but i will say this, looking at the numbers and looking at the battleground states, we felt very good going into this race last night. if you look at the stability in this race over the last two or three weeks, i think it certainly favored the president in a big way. we woke up this morning, chris, with nine battleground states, and we've had nine battleground states for months, and there's not one state of those nine that the romney people thought this morning was definitely put away for them. so, look, we've got a lot more paths to 270 than they do as chuck talked about. i feel very, very good right now. i will say this, you started the show by exhorting people to get out there and exercise their right to vote. look, get out there, stand in

line, if you're in line when the polls close, they'll have to let you vote. so go out there and make sure that your voice is heard. it's way too important to sit this one out. get in line, have your voice heard. if you're there, they'll have to let you vote. >> let me add one thing to that as a citizen, if you're a minority or you're a young person, you're the target of those people who are out there to suppress the vote. you're the people they don't want voting so that's all the more reason to get out there and stand in line and show them that you're going to vote as a citizen and nobody is going to talk you out of it. let me ask you about the numbers today. again, i want to go back to all the numbers. i looked at everything in the papers today, every single number for the last four or five days has been moving to obama. an absolute consistency. what's the romney case? i'm asking you to tell me the other side's signals here but what is their case that somewhere in the world the numbers are going the other way because if the numbers are consistently moving since thursday, which is my old-time principle of predicting elections, get the numbers on thursday, see which direction they're going on because nothing

really happens on saturday and sunday and that's always sort of been true. >> right. well, i think, too, look, their newfound love of the state of pennsylvania demonstrates they realize the path that they had through iowa and wisconsin and ohio is just not there for them. they started throwing money in places where there was tv left to buy because they couldn't buy in other places. they started conjuring these fantasies of hey, we feel like pennsylvania is tightening. it's looking good for us. we have momentum in pennsylvania, and then you find out on election night as chuck said it's not actually nearly as close as the people in boston would spin and have you believe. look, we felt good about this, and i think we felt good because we had a message of what this president had done and what this president wants to do over the course of the next four years to continue moving the economy forward, to strengthen it for middle class families. i think, quite frankly, it's just a message that's trumped governor romney's failed

economic theories. >> how glad are you, robert gibbs, you're a smart guy, how glad are you that romney didn't pick christie for his running mate? >> well, it would have been an interesting thing. i mean, look -- >> he wouldn't have had a partner to walk the boardwalk with last week. that's for sure. >> i will say this, i'm still struck by those pictures, and, look, i was -- i'm not name dropping here but we had bruce springsteen obviously with us yesterday and, you know, talking to him about what the jersey shore and those places meant to him as a kid and middle class families who had a shot at having, you know, a cottage at the beach, this isn't just all, you know, 12-room mansions. >> i know, i grew up at the shore in a row house in ocean city. i know all about it. >> those pictures continue to grab you by the heart and, you know, our thoughts and prayers go out to them. first thing the president did this morning was get on a call with fema at 7:30 in the

morning. it's near and dear to him and, look, i think it's going to be a good night for us. >> okay. thanks for coming on, robert gibbs. great to have you on. thanks both to chuck and howard. coming up, what do you know about tonight? how is it going to end? keep an eye on florida and ohio. two states we're going to take a look at next. we'll talk about them and if there's going to be a clear result. chuck just warned us of the worst possible case, a two-week delay finding out what happens in ohio. i have my put bonn tbutton on l democracy plaza on election day. ♪ [ birds chirping ] are you sure you can fit in there? [ chuckles ] ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] around view monitor with bird's-eye view.

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welcome back to "hardball." this race has been forming all year in a handful of key

battleground states and props none more important than ohio and florida. two different straights geographically that offer a potential palt to the presidency. we have reports from both sides. joi reid of the grio is reporting for us tonight in orlando and john nichols is in toledo. i want to start with ohio which is closer to us right now. john, if you had to pick it right now without any bs attached, who would you say is going to win ohio tonight? >> obama. >> tell me why. >> i think that something remarkable happened in the last two weeks of the campaign. it's obviously obama would have won it anyway and it's still going to be close. i'm not going to pretend differently, but my sense is that when mitt romney suggested that the jeep plant in toledo, ohio, would soon close and move to china and then when he was called out on that and still they decided to go up with ads that made that suggestion, i think it had a huge impact

particularly in this northwest corner of ohio. obviously romney -- >> how do you read that? where did you get that reading that that's bothered people? the vice president in our interview, he thinks that paid advertising can just smash through any kind of critical reporting. >> i don't know that's true in northwest ohio. the toledo blade has covered this story day inened and day on the frahm page. it's been a huge deal on local tv. when i was talking to people the last day or so, it came up as the first subject of conversation. i'll tell you something else, chris, i just got the report fromle local board of elections, turnout is up 3% from 2008. . ja let's go to joy down in orlando, this state you're cover something so vast, so in many way typical of america, it has every possible ethnic group, northerners, southerners, former new yorkers, everything from all the islands. it's all there, conservatives from cuba, liberals from the

dominican republican, they have people from puerto rico now. they have -- plus all the people that grew up in the south and that northern part, the panhandle. how do you pick a state like florida? i have always wondered how do you do it? >> it's a crazy state. sort of alabama in the north, new york in the state and the west in between. it's really a strange state with two different time zones. you know, floridians can vote until 7:00 p.m. but in the panhandle that's 8:00 p.m. eastern standard time. just getting the feel of the state, if you had asked me two weeks ago, i would have said romney was ahead because senior citizens who are such a huge bloc in florida, florida is the second oldest state after pennsylvania, they weren't breaking away from romney in the numbers i might have expected them to based on medicare. it seemed that that parsing of the idea of voucherizing medicare and saying if you're under 55, you're exempt from it really worked for romney. that said, chris, i think a couple weeks ago something changed in the zeitgeist in this

state and it was the reduction in early voting that cut it from 14 to 8 days and forced democrats to cram all their early vote in a few days. the palpable anger, the sense of resent am, the sense of rage really among particularly african-american voters who feel tremendously resentful. they feel like this is almost a second civil rights movement. they feel like they're fighting bull conner at the schoolhouse doors. i talked to a pastor this morning in south florida that has a radio show, and he said, look, if it hadn't been for these attempt at disinfranchising black voters, i might have had a hard time getting my congregation to get really motivated because they already did the historic election in '08. so there were a lot of people who were a little lax about it this time, but people are really angry at governor rick scott, really angry at republicans. i had another friend of mine who said she had a black republican friend who said i would vote republican based on my pocketbook but the hatred of barack obama, the hatred of this man is so offensive to me i

can't deal with it. i have got to vote for him. i think in florida something changed a couple weeks ago and the energy i see here and in central florida i talked to a woman named gloria who was puerto rican had her 60s, she talked about barack obama like he's her son. she feels personally. a republican voter for romney talked about guns and abortion, not really romney the man. so i think that's what's changed. >> well, there's a lot of time to vote down there. let me reup as perhaps an irrelevant white guy but i'm not irrelevant when it comes to this issue because i care a lot about it. i always say to graduating classes never say no to yourself, never, ever let the person who wants you to say no say it yourself. make them say no, show up, stay there until 7:00, be in line until they close, make sure you vote, don't leave that line, fight for your right. don't watch television tonight before you voted. that's the thing that matters. we cover that. that's the event. the event ain't watching. the event is voting. that's my -- >> actually -- >> your last word.

>> i was going to say gloria was 240 in line at 6:00 this morning. even though she had to be in work at a retail store. she got out of that line at 11:00 and she was glad she did it. >> we're looking at the numbers. if you look at the trend lines from pollster.com, you can see since the beginning of september president obama's had a lead over mitt romney in ohio. though the margin has varied slightly. of all the numbers pollster tracks, they estimate obama with 49.2% right now and romney's 45.8%. in florida the race is even tighter with romney now taking the lead from obama in early october before the president regained his razor-thin advantage. that estimate has the president now at 48.4% to romney's 47.9%. let me go to john on this. any reason to believe that those poll numbers are not accurate right now in any fuzziness there? any reason to chip away at them? >> i think it's important to note that the republicans have done huge mobilization here. there's no question that they

got a lot of absentee votes in and they've also been getting good turnout in their counties. so don't doubt that they're going to -- they're going to get it as close as they can. but, chris, as we were preparing to do this shoot with you, i went and took a driver around the south side of toledo. i found myself driving behind a van where somebody had scrawled on the back, vote van. if you need to vote, jump out in the road and stop the van. that's the level of energy that has gone into these northern ohio cities, and, you know, we hear this term all the time, boots on the ground, labor has boots on the ground. the fact of the matter is that in these union towns like akron and toledo and cleveland and youngstown, labor really has put boots on the ground. as i was driving through the near downtown neighborhood, i saw a blue van going by. it was the third baptist church and they had a banner out the window that said souls to the polls. so there's just a palpable energy, you can feel it on the streets, and i think that keeps that obama number up.

>> hope those energy -- goes into the executing. thank you. joy reid, has everybody heard her, get out and vote. ten voters in dixville notch, new hampshire, went to the polls last night. i don't think those results tell us anything, by the way. sort of fun to talk about it. this is "hardball" shall the place for politics live from democracy plaza which does matter on election day.

we're going to try to stump some political junkies with questions from bing elections. do you know where your polling place is? maybe somewhere around my house. mine's just, right over that way. well you can find out exactly where it is using bing elections. it's a good day for politics. which way do you lean politically? conservative. republican. well, using the bing news selector you can find news from whichever way you lean. (together) social on this side, financial. which party is currently predicted to win a majority in the senate? the republicans? would you make a bet on that? no. are you chicken?

i am more optimistic today and i mean this sincerely, my word as a biden, i'm more optimistic today about the future of this country than i was when i got elected as a 29-year-old kid. >> wisconsin, the packers made it last sunday, they're on a roll. we know how to win. >> question of this election

comes down to this, do you want four more years like the last four years. >> iowa, i am not ready to give up on the fight. >> barack obama has character. he's got a backbone like a ramrod. >> mitt romney and i are going to run at our country's problems. >> american families, i need you to still have some fight in you, too. >> back to "hardball." that was a look at the candidates at their final rallies of the 2012 campaign. now to the voting. the first to do it were dixville notch up in new hampshire at midnight last night. the small town of ten voters is known for casting the first ballots on election day and last night was no exception. the vote this year was a 5-5 tie. it was the first time in dixville notch midnight voting history we got a tie. the next town over hart, new hampshire, with its 33 votes in total also voted at midnight there. president obama came in first. also last night marked president obama's final campaign rally. he brought the whole thing full circle with a story he told the crowd at his last rally in 2008.

it's about how that phrase "fired up, ready to go" came into being. it started in greenwood, south carolina. let's listen. >> turns out that greenwood is several hours away from every place else. it's a small building, a little fieldhouse and apartment. we go inside and lo and behold, after an hour and a half drive turns out there are 206 people there. i'm making may away around the room and i hear a voice come out behind me, fired up. i hear this voice saying ready to go. and the other 20 people in the room act like this happens all the time. i turn around there's this small woman about 60 years old. she's standing there and she looks at me and she's smiling and she says, fired up. turns out she's famous throughout the area when she goes to football games and when she goes to rallies and she goes to community events.

she does this chant of hers. after a minute or so, i'm feeling kind of fired up. i'm feeling like i'm ready to go. that's how this thing started. this became one of the anthems of our campaign. so i've just got one question for you. are you fired up? >> ready to go! >> fired up? fired up? >> ready to go. >> are you fired up? >> ready to go! >> the president invited the woman who got everybody fired up in the first place to the event last night but she was too busy with one last get out the vote effort in north carolina. up next, we'll lay out what's on the line with this election. you're watching "hardball," the place for politics from democracy plaza on election day. ♪

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i'm sue her haera with your cnbc market wrap. stocks rise today despite election uncertainty. the dow gained 133 points. the s&p up 11. and the nasdaq added 12. so far nearly 80% of s&p 500 companies have reported their earnings with more than 60% beating their estimates. and while the outcome of the election is far from certain, stocks have done well under an obama presidency. since he took office, the dow is up nearly 60%, the s&p is up about 70%, and the nasdaq up more than 95%. and that's it from cnbc, we are first in business worldwide. and now, back to "hardball." welcome back to "hardball." on election day each president ideal election feels the like the most important in history. this time it's not an

understatement to say the stakes in this election could not be much higher regarding your health, your security, your money, and your rights, of course. joining me is "washington post" column uk eugene robinson and new york magazine's john heilemann. whos are msnbc political analysts. i guess we have all given talks to our friends have asked bus this election and asked so what question. george wallace used to say there wasn't a dime's worth of different twens the republicans and democrats. i don't think he would be saying that today. let me go to gene on that point. your health issue. it seems the most historic thing that president obama has done has been obama care. >> yeah. >> getting the 45 million people or whatever at least the chance to get a self-reliant health care policy and not to depend on the emergency room anymore. your thoughts? >> exactly. i think that's the most important, the most historic thing he's done, and what was really historic about it was establishing the idea, the idea that there ought to be universal health care and taking this giant step toward it.

for that to be imperilled, of course, you haven't heard much from mitt romney about that the last couple weeks, but before hand, day one i'm going to start to dismantle obama care which, by the way, i invented but don't pay any attention to that. i think that is something that is hugely at stake in this election and it would be a huge step backward. >> is it fair, john, to say the republicans voting for mitt romney want to kill obama care in its crib? >> well, yeah. i think there's no single thing that's animated the republican base more than opposition to obama care. i don't know practically speaking whether it will be possible and i don't know whether there is the appetite to actually do that among senate republicans to actually pull that lever because romney wants to try to keep the popular parts of the bill. he wants to try to strip out the unpopular parts of the bill. unraveling obama care is a lot harder than it looks but there's no question that there's a big, huge piece of the republican base that wants that nothing --

more than nothing else -- wants nothing more than that if romney gets elected. >> let's talk about the other issues. a lot of people watching are 65, depending on a program they've come to love, medicare. they may be depending for long-term care on medicaid. is there going to be a big shift if romney wins on that? you start, john. is that at stake here, the security of those programs? >> to me that's one of the biggest issues going forward. you know, we see how romney brought paul ryan on the ticket. ryan has a definitely -- quite straightforwardly radical set of proposals about entitlement reform he wants to try to pursue to pare down the size and scope of government. mitt romney backed away from some of the proposals because they are quite unpopular with a lot of voters in the course of this campaign but i got to say, given that that document, the ryan budget, is the governing philosophical and ideological road map for the whole republican congress and mitt romney has aligned himself with

paul ryan on the ticket, i think that is one of the places where the divergence between president obama's vision of the future and mitt romney's vision of the future where the divergence is the greatest and that's the place where i think people should be most concerned if they want to keep those programs intact. >> i think that's absolutely true philosophically. practically i wonder whether romney/ryan could get that through. you know, a divided senate, there are even a lot of folks in the house that would have -- of course, the house did pass the ryan budget but if push actually came to shove and it could actually happen, will they voucherize medicare? are they going to bloc grant medicaid? i think you have trouble with that. the affordable care act, i think the practical impact is its implementtation. all the rules have to be writ. essentially by the executive branch. romney can directly affect that. >> let's look at what the right is saying. a lot of people, not just women

and perhaps gay people now are watching the supreme court. the fact that the court will have before it the whole issue of proposition from california and the issue of same-sex, it always has the potential to go after roe v. wade. we have three or four justices now in their 70s, one in poor health. it seems to me hard to argue that the next president, if it's the same president or the next president, are going to have an opportunity to pick supreme court nominees, and they will have an impact on roe v. wade it seems to me. >> across a range of issues, chris. i don't want to diminish roe v. wade but you pointed out the gay rights decisions. there are a lot of race decisions before the court on affirmative action and other race related matters. all social policy. there isn't a more important branch of government when it comes to social policy than the supreme court. it's always true. it's almost the single biggest thing that's at stake in any presidential election and this one particularly because the age of the justices, as you pointed out. the next president might get to

appoint three supreme court justices in the next four years and that could alter the balance of the court in profound ways and we've had a steady march to the right on this supreme court over the course of the last 20 years. that is a big, big deal tonight. >> to make your point here, mitt romney on the very suggest on "meet the press." >> hope to appoint justices to the supreme court that will follow the law and the constitution and it would be my preference that they reverse roe v. wade and, therefore, they return to the people and their elected representatives the decisions with regards to this important issue. >> you know, they say they're just going to turn it back to the states and then step two is outlaw it at the state level. i don't understand why that's supposedly some sort of sweetener. >> doesn't sweeten it for a lot of people. what i'm confident romney would do is upset this sort of balance we've had on the court that we've gotten used to. four on the left, four way to the right, and one kind of

center right who could go either way but who kind of tries to moderate the court's decision and the court's movement which has been steadily to the right recently. i think romney would very deliberately and probably successfully move it all the way over to the right, and it would have a huge impact on social -- >> let's talk about money in the election. it seems to me president obama has talked, it's one area where the conservatives ought to like what he's saying. he's talked about a corporate tax reduction. it seems to me if there's a deal if he wins, that the conservatives and the people with money anded corporate leaders will be happy if they cut a deal. co-bring back the individual rate for the top brackets up to 37%. the great thing about numbers is you can negotiate. i have never understood why it's so hard to negotiate these tax issues with the two political parties. why is it? why can't they agree somewhere in the middle and get it over with? >> well, that would be a perfectly sensible position, chris, if our government worked the what i you and i think it should and one of the parties

was not -- had not taken as a bedrock philosophical commitment the notion there should be no new revenue. but i think, look, in this area is where i think that it's likely to me and to my eye at least that romney and obama are most likely to end up in the same place. i think obama will push for a grand bargain, a bipartisan grand bargain. i think romney will try to push for something like that same grand bargain. i think the bush tax cuts will expire at the end of the year and will get restored for the people who make $250,000 a year and less. i think they will probably end up kind of hurting both of their bases and going for deals on the grand bargain that won't be that far apart. >> i think the president -- if it's the president is re-elected i think he has plenty of opportunity to throw them something to get that back to the bill clinton takts rates. thank you very much gene and john. -coming up, we're keeping an eye on the potential issues at the polls nationwide.

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we're back and people and here are keeping an eye on voting issues across the country. the cell phone video you're about to see was shot at a

polling site in millstown borough in pennsylvania near harrisburg. it shows a voter trying repeatedly to vote for president obama using a touch screen voting booth but the machine registered a vote for mid-romney. the video was posted to youtube. let's watch it. drive me crazy. the voter was ultimately age to cast his vote for president obama accurately. nbc affiliate wjal in harrisburg is reporting the machine was taken out of service, thank god. the reports of sip lar problems in early voting in colorado. in a letter addressed to elections officials in colorado, ohio, kansas, north dakota -- actually north carolina, missouri, and colorado dated november 1st, the republican national committee agencied that some machines in those states were malfunctioning during early voting flipping votes the other way just as we just saw only in

the other direction. the letter says machines quote populated a vote for barack obama when a voter cast his or her ballot for mitt romney. interesting, populated the vote. the rnc chief council asked election officials to add tech anythingings and recalibrate the machines on morning of election day. with me, richard wolffe, political analyst david corn. i just love the lingo, rnc official, recalibrate, populate. why not just say vote? i don't know where this jargon comes from. tell me about the state of play, will we get a clear result so we know who won? >> i think we will. the margins we're seeing in the polls suggest we'll get a clear number one way or another. it was close in 2004. john kerry took the decision there weren't enough provisional ballots to make up the difference. he was 60,000 short -- >> do you think he had a case to make for a stolen election?

>> no, i don't think he did. with any luck, i think we'll see a similar situation in ohio where we'll have a clear winner. and pennsylvania, your home state, you know, they have very confused guidelines about i.d. i don't think pennsylvania will be close either. >> let me get back to david corn. i taught briefly, i was a graduate assistant and i began the pattern, the same students always screwed it up and the same students always got it right. why do we always have ohio and floer as problem areas? florida because i don't know what they're up to. ohio because i'm afraid of what they're up to. >> i think people are right to look at the close states and see this is where it pays to have shenanigans. you don't need to do it in cal or idaho where you know what the vote results will be. my rule of thumb is that it's hard to steal more than 1%, 2% of the volt. so, if you have a clear decisive win of 2% or more either way, then whatever happens with

provisional ballots, long lines and other possible shenanigans with voting machines, really won't be -- >> let's be careful about that word, steal. how do you know that and what do you mean by that? >> well, i'm saying -- call it shenanigans, whether it's suppression, long lines or people have suspicions about voting machines. if there's a big enough gap among candidates, i don't think it can be overcome by shenanigans. the but in in a close vote, in pennsylvania people are being turned away from the polls and people purged improperly. we hope in pennsylvania the gap is large enough that that's just a footnote or asterisk, it doesn't matter. the problem becomes if you have any razor-thin victories in any of these key states that could swing the election one way or another, and you have these incredible allegations, then we enter another mess and people have a legitimate concern about the validity of the election.

>> i don't like capital punishment but i would think about it for those who cheat on elections. it's a sacrament. don't mess with our elections. let's start with florida because we have the joke in florida of theirs only three kinds of floridians, those who can count and those who can't. it's not a good joke. will we get a good vote? florida? >> those who have been frustrated by voting, lack of voting machines, some confusion about the ballots, florida is the one that troubles me the most because i think it's going to be the closest of these states, throwing up these kinds of problems. we're only now entering the time frame where the lines of voters are the really troubling thing. people voting for an hour or two, it's a frustrating, bad through the day. as they get to closing time, an hour or two, three, four hours of voting, that means people will be denied, some people, depending on how those polling stations are managed, they'll be

denied the right to vote. >> you know if you're in line at 7:00 in southern florida, in the panhandle at 8:00, you have to vote. you have to get somebody to hold your place while you go to the bathroom, get a drink, but you're allowed to vote if you're there. >> let me expand upon vice president richard wolfe's point. it's a national disgrace if we can't have a voting system where people can get in and out in an hour, maybe an hour and a half. if you're in line for five hours anywhere, it shouldn't be. part of the problem is, the electoral system we have, state by state by state, is controlled by partisans. often by secretaries of state from one party or the other. they don't have the trust of the full population. we need to find a way to move towards nonpartisan professional control of our elections, maybe with some federal standards here, because it is ridiculous that any american should have to wait in line for four hours as if we're not a fully western industrialized nation. >> but the best reason to vote --

>> the reason -- >> the best reason to vote is when you know somebody's out there trying to stop you from voting. that's the best reason to wait in line and just wait them out. call it revenge, call it what you want, but voting is the best revenge. thank you, david corn -- >> not everybody -- >> when we return, let me finish with my prediction for tonight. you're watching "hardball," live from democracy plaza on election day. ♪ ♪

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let me finish with this. i have not made a prediction all

year and i don't know all the forces in this country and how they're going to coalesce today. i know many forces, of course, we all do. an economy not recovering fast enough. a president that's been good at many important decisions but not a great salesman. a country in need of a win that wants to feel better about itself. if you watch each night you probably know where i stand. but what matters is where you stand. i'll make one prediction now. if you don't vote, you'll regret it. you'll see the results coming in and you wish you would have done what you could do to be part of it. you would have blown a chance to be part of history. years from now your grandkids will ask, who do you vote for in that close election of 2012? you'll be embarrassed. vote in the words of ted kennedy, so missed now, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die. that's "hardball" for now. stay tuned for msnbc special coverage of 2012 election night.